Fully Ready to Launch GST - Revenue Secretary
IN an interview with the Economic Times, the Revenue Secretary says,
We are fully ready to launch GST. The steps to GST are very clearly laid out. Once the Constitutional Amendment Bill is passed, it will have to be ratified by 50% of the states after which the Presidential assent can be obtained. The draft GST Bill is being given a final touch and it would be put in public domain as early as possible. However, it can be presented to Parliament and the state assemblies only after the Constitutional Amendment Bill gets Presidential assent. In the meantime, a massive training of the central and state government officials is going on. Also, the contract for system for GST is already awarded by the GSTN Ltd and it would be ready before March 2016.
In a first of its kind decision, the Tax Department Boards CBEC & CBDT have issued instructions to withdraw appeal by the government in tribunal and high courts in which the tax effect is less than Rs 10 lakh and Rs 20 lakh respectively. This move is appreciated by everyone. We hope to free up resources for early completion of normal assessment of scrutiny cases.
We are trying to change the culture of Tax Department by bringing in more measures of accountability and by giving clear cut instructions to the field authorities. The focus is on use of e-mail as a preferred source of communication, minimising the occasions for contacts between the assessing officers and the assesse and use of IT Tools for fixing accountability.
The e-assessment procedure is initiated on a pilot basis in five major cities in limited number of cases. Once we see the results and once a proper IT solution is ready, we would like to roll-out e-assessment for the whole country in phases.
On the whole, there would still be a minor shortfall of about Rs 30,000-40,000 crore in revenue target of Rs 14.5 lakh crore.